Weeknight Date Night!

Jake and I work in the same area and make the commute together most days.  Of course, "What's for dinner?" is often asked during our 45+ minute drive home.  This is one of our go-to meals so we always have these ingredients on hand.

Here's what we use for our super easy French bread pizza for 2 that comes out great every single time:
One frozen Whole Foods organic mini baguette
Applegate Farms pepperoni
Whole Foods shredded mozzarella cheese
Whole Foods pizza sauce

Sides:
Bag of salad
Cole Farms lite Sweet and Sour dressing - my favorite!

Jake's signature drink - We call it Concoction:
light Hawaiian punch
orange pineapple banana juice
ginger ale

Cookies:
snack size Betty Crocker peanut butter cookie mix (prepare dough to package directions)
Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips
Sunspire peanut butter chips

Games:



Well, that's Pizza and Game Night at Welcome Sunshine Home!  Add in the 80s or 90s music channel from Time Warner Cable and it's a super fun weeknight date for us.  Do you have a regular pizza night or game night at your house?

Click here to see some of the parties we'll be mingling at this week.

And the award goes to...

Hi!

A few weeks ago Holly at Naptime gave us the Stylish Blogger award and Katie from The Romantic Type awarded us the Great Blog Neighbor award.  Everyone should go check these blogs out now.  Seriously, I'll wait.  Thank you so much, ladies!  You rock!  :)

Rules for accepting the Stylish Blogger Award:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you the award

2. Share 7 things about yourself

3. Pass this on to 13 other great bloggers

4. Contact the selected bloggers and tell them about their award

7 things about Jake and Alison of Welcome Sunshine Home

1. Jake bakes cakes for me to give other people.

2. I decorate the cakes.  The fun part!

3. Then, no one does the dishes...until every fork and dinner plate in our house is dirty.  

4. Jake does household cleaning and maintenance stuff without being asked.  He makes an effort to help with laundry, sweeping, dog hair removal, window washing, yard care, etc.  No, you can't borrow him!    

5. I do my best and fastest cleaning when I'm upset.  Hmm, maybe I should get upset more often.

6. Jake can cook too.  He makes an awesome Chicken Parm dinner and is quite skilled in making breakfast.  

7. We've had dinner out almost every night for a couple weeks.  Our Maytag dishwasher was recalled for a faulty heating element and then in a bizarre twist of fate our Maytag electric range (oven and all four burners) stopped working while cooking breakfast one Saturday morning.  Both appliances were purchased brand new only three years ago and have been used infrequently gently used.

Thirteen blogs receiving the Stylish Blogger Award:

1. Luckiest in Love

2. Words by Katie

3. White House Black Shutters

4. Paint or Dig

5. A Latte with Ott, A

6. Nomie's Three Monsters

7. The Spunky Diva 

8. The Romantic Type

9. Mommy Only Has Two Hands

10. Outwardly Pleasant

11. 5 Minutes Just for Me

12. a and w

13. While He was Napping

Rules for accepting the Great Blog Neighbor Award:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you the award

2. Pass this on to 10 other great bloggers

3. Contact the selected bloggers and tell them about their award

Ten bloggers receiving the Great Blog Neighbor Award:

1. Melissa at My Pet Blog - She's read 89 books so far this year and reviewed each one!  She's also a writer (and Jake's sister!) and is participating in the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge right now.  50,000 words in 30 days! Click here to read more about that.

2. Kris at Not Enough Books - Plenty of book reviews and she's been taking part in 18 different reading challenges this year! 

3. Hazel Loves Design - Check out the book club she has going. 

4. Karen at Barefoot in Portland - Karen is the ambassador for Barefoot Books in my area.

5. Frugal Mom at Frugality is Free - Check out her book reviews, the The Book Lover's Blog Hop on Tuesdays, and her Book Giveaway linky list.

6. Cathy at Cathy Kennedy Stories - Children's books author

7. Tina from Book Couture - Young Adult book reviews and some author interviews.

8. Carol at Songberries - She has a review and cookbook giveaway going on now (ends 11/24).

9. Jennifer at Book Noise - She has tons of book reviews!

10. Sabrina brings us About Happy Books - Reviews, challenges, and author interviews!

Thanks again to Katie and Holly for the awards!  :)

And the winner is...

Shanee from Adventures of a Thifty Mom is the winner of the $35 CSN Stores gift certificate!

Shanee said... [Reply to comment]

I really like this: http://www.csnstores.com/Bebe-Chic-Botanica-Wall-Art-EU1897.html

shaneemcfarland@gmail.com

OCTOBER 20, 2010 7:31 PM 

Her pick is really cute so I thought I'd share it... 

Sorry I'm a few days late with announcing the giveaway winner.  I went to South Carolina (my first visit there since 1994!) for work and am still getting caught up.  

Thanks to everyone that entered our first giveaway!

Come visit me on Blue Cricket Designs today!

Click here to visit our featured post! 

Thank you for the feature, Becca!

Happy, Happy Birthday!

Jake is the man behind the drill, hammer, miter saw, and paint brush around these parts.  He writes posts for Welcome Sunshine Home too whenever he can wrestle the laptop away from me (but I'm scrappy so that's not too often).  ;)  Here are a few of his posts: Ice Cube Flinging (a Jordan family tradition), Our Proposal Stories, Hot and Tankless, Random Acts of Kindness, and Renovation Realities.

Jake, do you remember when I said "Oh no, I won't put these on the blog" when we were in that garden in Cape Cod?  I don't print photos anymore and these make me too happy not to record them here.

He was being silly while I took photos from several yards away on the other side of some hedges as I pretended to be the paparazzi.  We make our own fun (bonus points to anyone who can name that reference!), people.

I love this man!  :)

But wait there's more!  Two of my favorite people in the whole wide world were born on the same day (a couple years apart).  Stacy...Stacy...Stacy, are you there darling?  You didn't think that I'd forget about you, did you?  :)  Stacy's a smart chick who takes her whole birthday week off from work (genius, right?) and also made me promise never ever post her photo online.  It's a bummer because I've got a really good one of her holding another friend's super cute baby.  Stacy, FYI, I'm holding your birthday presents hostage until I can take you out for your birthday lunch next week! :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Jake and Stacy!


UPDATE:  Click here to see a post by Jake's sister and learn even more about him.  Ever heard of the two minute game?  No?  It's genius so be sure to click here...  :)

Shutter Love Tuesday - Brown

Bru as the 'bored Bernard' is our Brown entry at Trendy Treehouse's Shutter Love Tuesday party this week.

Look at those big brown eyes.

UPDATE: Click here to vote for Bru's photo in the Shutter Love competition.  To vote you just leave a comment on this post (she's photo #10).  :)

Quick and Easy Taco Cups

Let's make some tasty taco cups!  These are a great party appetizer, satisfy football munchies, or pile up well for a taco salad dinner.

You can easily adjust the batch size and ingredients used.  Here's what we used this time because we had leftovers from taco night...
1 cup taco meat
1/2 cup shredded taco cheese
2 cups salad
30 Baked Tostitos Scoops!
Plain Greek Yogurt (or sour cream)
Taco Sauce
Cookie sheet

Have you tried using plain Greek yogurt in place of sour cream yet?  I use Greek yogurt all the time.  It's high protein, thick and creamy, and low calorie.  Perfect for dips.  My favorite brand is Fage but it was out of stock at our grocery store.  The Yoplait version was fine.

Set the oven's broiler to low.  Don't like to use your broiler?  Then, preheat to 400 degrees.

I like to cover my cookie sheet with non-stick wrap because these can be sloppy to make.

Lay out all your scoops.

Fill each cup with some taco meat.

 Dot each cup with taco sauce (or salsa).  The squeeze bottle taco sauce makes this so easy.

Cover with shredded taco cheese then put them under the broiler for 1-3 minutes (I use the middle oven rack).  

Here they are fresh from the broiler... Crunchy, gooey, and delicious!  I take them out when the cheese is melted and the tortillas edges are starting to lightly brown.

For a taco salad, I put 12-15 cups on my plate, dolloped each cup with Greek yogurt, covered them with salad, and drizzled on a bit more taco sauce.  YUM!  This is one of my favorite dinners for leftovers night.

 Go whip up a batch and enjoy!

Brewster's New Command

 "Blog"

Of course, she learned it from Max.  Click here to see him.  :)